How to: Get SEO analytics beyond the stone age

The biggest mistake I see SEO’s make: They focus on keywords first and foremost, ignoring opportunities that exist right in their own analytics data. This is my presentation from SMX West 2010, where I talk about analytics strategies for SEO. It’ll help you get out of the keyword abyss. I added text so that it makes sense, instead of looking like a random set of images and babbling:

Ian Lurie is CEO and founder of Portent and the EVP of Marketing Services at Clearlink. He's been a digital marketer since the days of AOL and Compuserve (25 years, if you're counting). He's recorded training for Lynda.com, writes regularly for the Portent Blog and has been published on AllThingsD, Smashing Magazine, and TechCrunch. Ian speaks at conferences around the world, including SearchLove, MozCon, Seattle Interactive Conference and ad:Tech. He has published several books about business and marketing: One Trick Ponies Get Shot, available on Kindle, The Web Marketing All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies, and Conversation Marketing. Follow him on Twitter at portentint, and on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com/in/ianlurie.

Comments

Ian, Thanks again. You are a veritable wealth of timely, relevant, and important information. Adding this to my ever growing “List of things to do, that Ian suggested I do, to make my business better” Travis

Hi Ian! First and foremost, thanks for a great blog. I just have a comment on the presentation. Have you taken into consideration that on slide 35, Analytics overwrites the medium if a new referral/medium is present when you write your conclusion on that slide? The conversion in your example would be for the brand keyword, not a direct source or PPC. Well, depending if they cleared their cache or not in between visits of course 🙂 If they had no cookie medium/referral, the conversion would come from a direct source. This is something I’ve been thinking about. Seeing as a person navigated as they did in your example, could one say that the actual keyword driving the conversion would be that of example #1, or is it the actual last click that made up their mind and what you should focus on? Whats your view on this? Cheers, Marcus